


A Long Journey To Plastic Beach

by Piratenkuh



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Abusive Behavior, Action/Adventure, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Use, Gun Violence, Horror, Kidnapping, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Road Trips, Survival Horror, a very confused one, a very much not healthy friendship/relationship, beware the trigger warnings tho, if it burns at all it's gonna be a slow burn, ngl if I ever continue this it's probs gonna be a ride, not a song fic, plastic beach, stylo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21956395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piratenkuh/pseuds/Piratenkuh
Summary: If you ever wondered what the hell happened previous to the Stylo music video, let me present you my idea of the events:With every passing day, Murdoc more and more grows to be a prisoner of his own hide out at Point Nemo.He might feel no hope for the fate of the earth, he might have messend with the wrong people this time, he might even have destroyed his band forever, but he'd be damned if he wouldn't leave the world with a last bang of an album and his frantic work is the only thing that keeps him going. And going and going...That is, until his singer involuntarily crashes into his solitude and he is soon forced to leave the dirty pink monotony of Plastic Beach for some road action, that doesn't has anything to do with his life's fever dream work.Or maybe it has everything to do with it?
Relationships: Murdoc Niccals/Stuart "2D" Pot
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	A Long Journey To Plastic Beach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [an encouraging friend](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=an+encouraging+friend).



It’s hard to see the road through all the fume their engine coughs out in big, dirty white chunks more and more often. 

Murdoc’s grip around the steering wheel is so tight that his long nails dig deep into his sweat-slick palms, but the pain is nothing he can afford to pay attention to.  
Their lives depend solely on him and his driving abilities right now. At least he was sure of it since the moment 2D had noticed the massive storm cloud that obscured the blinding blue desert sky just mere minutes after they’d forced the traffic policeman off the road.  
It had been a panic reaction, he’d tried to tell himself in spite of the uneasy feeling in his stomach, but the adrenaline and his wildly pounding heart had helped him to numb what is left of his decomposing conscience. 

In the backseat, Cyborg still gives out nothing but electrical whirring sounds and the sharp smell of scorched plastic and heated copper that burns through his ruined nostrils.  
The let-down windows don’t do much against it. She couldn’t have chosen a worse point to finally draw her last artificial breath.  
They were truly alone now. This, as well as the occurrence of the cloud, couldn’t have been a coincidence - he is sure of it - and it would only be a matter of time until they’d have to flee yet another menace. 

“Murdoc, look!” 2D sputters perfectly in time, pointing behind them with his comically long index finger.  
This would probably become one of the rare times where Murdoc hates to be right, so he doesn’t bother with an answer. Instead, he reluctantly dares to throw a glance into the rear-vision mirror just to spot a red car tailing them in alarmingly short distance. 

He wonders how another car could get so close to them in the middle of fucking nowhere, so he examines the other vehicle closer for a second time.

The sweat on his forehead turns freezing cold.  
This wasn’t just any red car. He can’t really make out the drivers face yet, but he can vaguely see that the man is bald and that was just too weird to be a coincidence. It must be him again! Murdoc’s thoughts jumble through his head with growing discomfort. If this turned out to be true, the question was… how? They believed he had died! Nobody could have survived the mess they had caused. 

His throat ties up and a throbbing pain starts to spread in his tired limbs, making his injuries noticable again.  
How could that Bruce Willis copy be after them again? Murdoc knew for a fact how hard it was to get people back from the realms of the dead! Except for… maybe he hasn’t been a human being to begin with… maybe he was just one of the thousand things chasing them. _,Maybe he just had borrowed a human skin, the skin of a well-known action star?’_ Murdoc thinks and a shiver runs down his spine.

The Copycat clearly doesn’t want to lose any more time and speeds forward to what is just an arm’s length next to Stylo.  
Anxiety claws its way into his intestines when Murdoc tears his eyes from the road to examine the eerie-familiar face of the man.  
No doubt now that they had been fatally wrong about the man’s deceased status. 

He turns his head to the road again and desperately tries finding a chance to dislodge the red car, but there is just the same forlorn and dusty-yellow landscape they were crossing for the last few hours. Not that Murdoc has a lot of time to think, he’s quickly interrupted by 2D squealing.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Copycat-Willis fiddling with a heavy-calibred gun and his thoughts run hopeless empty circles in an attempt to dig up another of his master plans. Unfortunately, he isn’t able to come up with more than a string of curse words under his ragged breath instead.

It’s apparent that the man’s intention is to shoot them. Panicking, he tries to at least let up the window as some vague form of protection. It moves painfully slow thou and he ducks behind the badly affected car door as deep as possible without completely losing sight of the road. 

He just hopes that 2D had the same idea when a crashing bang directly over his head deafens him for a moment. Glass splinters are raining into his lap.

Only seconds and another shot tears a bullet hole through their windscreen directly at the height where Murdoc’s head would have usually been. The angle, however, tells him that their persecutor must have fallen back a little.

Murdoc tries to peek over the car door. A third shot immediately destroys Stylo’s rear window for this bold attempt.  
The shock of the impact makes Murdoc lose control of the car for a moment and it starts to careen off the road. A high-pitched scream is elicited from 2D because of that.  
In a reflex, Murdoc shoots up to steer them back onto the road. If they drove into the desert, the rocky ground would slow them down and there were only the hills to his right or the abyss of the mostly empty Mojave riverbed to his left, neither option promising to be a great escape route.

Still, Murdoc’s burning eyes seek frantically for the smallest opportunity that could get them away from the Copycat, but there is nothing and they don’t have anything left that could be used as a weapon. How foolish had he been to only rely on Cyborg as if she really was indestructible… 

It dawns on him, that it comes down to a car chase and that speed was their only chance.  
To reach the next village still alive enough to find them some help is their single hope.  
Or maybe fake Willis would even leave them off the hook with too many potential witnesses involved. 

A massive jolt then shudders their car and catapults Murdoc so violently to the front that his chin hits the steering wheel. 

The next bump is still strong, as not as unexpected, but the engine emits a thick plume of smoke again and he fears for poor overheated Stylo’s functionality.  
2D is crumpled down in the passenger seat, uttering anxious whines while Murdoc tries with his whole body and (technically sold) soul to will the car forward. 

The red button beneath the gear change catches his glance. He hadn’t considered it a real option yet because the car seemed to be at its limits already. Pushing it further by putting in the turbo might bear the risk of a break down, but he gets more desperate with every second and it’s apparent there won’t really be something else that could save them…

Another bump from behind pushes them forward again and all the air is squeezed out of Murdoc’s lungs.  
“Bloody stop this you bastard,” he screams over the noise while he briefly wonders if their crazy stalker could only be playing with them.  
He shoots a look at the side mirror to find out what the driver is up to, but all he can see is how the man leans out of his window before the mirror explodes in a burst of silver splinters, making Murdoc wince and 2D's sobs loud and miserable. 

His hand quivers when he blindly grabs for the turbo button. 

He doesn’t dare to pray to Satan, but he hopes with everything he’s got left that their car would outlive his worries when he presses the button.

He can see the heat flaring up around the engine’s extension on the bonnet and miraculously, he is pressed into his seat by the additional speed. A look into the rear-vision mirror tells him that they’re leaving the Copycat behind and he can’t help but feel relief, even if his brain tells him that this is a treacherous sensation. He had probably drained the rest of power out of the Camaro to gain this little head start and he has no idea how far or close they could be to the next scrap of civilization. Heavy breathing fills the car. 

“Muds, did we lose him?” 2D’s sniffs after a moment and his voice is shaky, but Murdoc can feel him turning around to look out for the red car.  
“I don’t know,” he answers through gritted teeth, eyes still trained on the empty road ahead. He can feel the power boost taper off and his heart is sinking when they pass over a hill and he also can’t make out anything behind them anymore.  
Not being able to see their persecutor makes him even more nervous than having him in sight, but surprisingly, the sky clears up again. No dark cloud? So, could it be…?

“Murdoc!” 2D suddenly shrieks and another violent shudder runs through Stylo as it gets rammed out of nowhere. 

Murdoc doubles over. His grip around the steering wheel slips when his forehead painfully hits some part of the dashboard and he can feel the car swerving.  
He scrambles himself back up on the wheel to regain control as fast as he can. But the sight he’s greeted with makes him regret his decision. All his decisions, really.

They are forced off the asphalt and with light speed they are approaching the yellow barrier that marks the edge of the bold cliff to the dry riverbed.  
He slams on the breaks, but they crash through the thin wood as if it's nothing but cardboard. His stomach drops to his knees and his head is empty.  
The only thing he can hear is 2D’s despaired cry.

Suddenly, he feels nothing but weightlessness.  
_‘I killed us,’_ he simply thinks. 

Then there is the sight of vast wild blue, so much more unforgiving than the colour of the desert sky, and he screams.

**Author's Note:**

> Phew, this is my very first attempt on writing a multi chapter fic and I feel hopelessly unprepared tbh. But it's worth a try, especially since I'm carrying the idea of a Stylo road action fic with me for likely 2 two years now. 
> 
> I tried to put a lot of research into this, but I'm neither american nor british and not too familiar with both countries, so there might still be quite some things I got wrong. You're always welcome to point these out! 
> 
> As for backround info, there are a few points I'd like to address: 
> 
> 1) Stylo and the location it's supposed to take place in are a mystery to me. My takeaway was, that the vid simply displays an undistinct, "wild west"-looking landscape near the ocean, but I couldn't find an exactly matching place (I wrote down my path of research - including maps - in a tumblr post some time ago, if you're interested: https://whatamessz.tumblr.com/post/179650190348/stylo-geographics-ok-so-my-phone-and-my-laptop).  
> I decided the entry scene to take place near the Stylo filming location: Calico Ghost Town in San Bernardino County, California, along the interstate 15.  
> So the "empty riverbed" Murdoc was thinking about in this story is the dry bed of the Mojave river. To Murdoc's surprise however, it isn't dry at the time. It's one of the more rare occasions where it's flooded, so they are just lucky to survive his fatal idiocy. The river isn't flowing into the ocean either, so I think they just waited in the river to be safe in Stylo's submarine form.
> 
> 2) I might be horribly late to point this out, but did you ever realize that Bruce Willis probably isn't attempting to murder them? The 1968 Chevrolet El Camino he's driving is a pickup truck with an open cargo area. In one of the last shots, where Bruce is getting out of the car to look for the Gorillaz, we can see that he has a rope in the back, indicating that he wanted to catch them alive. Therefore my conclusion was, that he just wanted to "play" with them when he shot the Stylo.
> 
> Lmk if you have any more questions and thank you so much for reading!  
> Comments and kudos mean the world and help me keep going, so I'd be hyped if you left any if you like this story! <3


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